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Kubernetes is hard

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Re: Kubernetes is hard

#41

Post by jasoneckert »

While I understand where the author is coming from, my opinion of Kubernetes (and production deployment in general) isn't that it is hard per se, but that it involves many components.

I liken it to Lego. Each component separately isn't hard to work with, and once you figure out how to connect it to other components, you can do it 100 times easily. And like Lego, a typical Kubernetes environment may consist of several dozen or hundred pieces.

So, I wouldn't describe Kubernetes as hard - I would describe it as large (i.e., comprised of multiple interconnected components). And by being large, there is a fair amount of time and effort necessary to learn it and maintain it, which may make it seem hard. But in the end, it's just Lego.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#42

Post by sshine »

overgard wrote: post #31

I agree with the point that production is hard. There's so many things you just don't think about as a developer that end up being important. Log storage, certificate renewal, etc. I think how "hard" kubernetes is depends on how deep you go. If you're building a cluster from scratch, on your own hardware, setting up the control plane yourself etc. it's very very hard. On the other hand, if you're using a hosted servi…

> If you're building a cluster from scratch, on your own hardware, setting up the control plane yourself etc. it's very very hard.

I'd like to make a distinction:

If you do cluster deployment from scratch, Kubernetes actually gets easier.

Because you get good at it. What it also gets is more time-consuming.

If you aim to replicate all of AWS, then unrealistically so.

The art is knowing when to stop. For a lot of people that's even before Kubernetes.

For others, you can run all your apps in a cluster, except persistent storage.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#43

Post by kazen44 »

majewsky wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #14

37signals is not like the typical large-scale startup. They have an extremely small team (around 30 people?), and just a couple of products. Large-scale startups use dynamic-scheduled cloud services in part to reduce coupling between teams. Every service --- and there are dozens --- is scheduled independently, and new teams can get spun up to roll out new services without too much intervention from other teams. When…

> Large-scale startups use dynamic-scheduled cloud services in part to reduce coupling between teams. This is the crux. It's Conway's Law in action. The promise of Kubernetes to a large org is that you can split the baremetal and OS layer into one team that manages everything up to Kubernetes, and then that's the common interface where all other teams deploy their applications into. And besides the team separation, t…

while i agree with you that kubernetes allows you to split the stack down to individual "specialisations", i don't see how this is different with kubernetes compared to "traditional" Virtual machines?

Usually the differentiator is either the container or VM. Everything beneath that gets managed by some kind of operations team (or teams if you are really large or specialized), while the stuff running ontop of the infrastructure is usually done by developers/application maintainers.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#44

Post by bdougherty »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #2

I think the post title should be called “Production is hard” (as the author talks about later on). Pick up any technology out there: from Python, to C++, to K8s, to Linux… Do the analogous “Hello world” using such technologies and run the program on your laptop. Easy. You congratulate yourself and move on. Production is another story. Suddenly your program that wasn’t checking for errors, breaks. The memory that you…

Production is only as hard as you make it.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#45

Post by kazen44 »

sshine wrote: post #42
overgard wrote: post #31

I agree with the point that production is hard. There's so many things you just don't think about as a developer that end up being important. Log storage, certificate renewal, etc. I think how "hard" kubernetes is depends on how deep you go. If you're building a cluster from scratch, on your own hardware, setting up the control plane yourself etc. it's very very hard. On the other hand, if you're using a hosted servi…

> If you're building a cluster from scratch, on your own hardware, setting up the control plane yourself etc. it's very very hard. I'd like to make a distinction: If you do cluster deployment from scratch, Kubernetes actually gets easier. Because you get good at it. What it also gets is more time-consuming. If you aim to replicate all of AWS, then unrealistically so. The art is knowing when to stop. For a lot of peop…

At the end of the day, getting a stable production environment is simply a tradeoff between the amount of complexity you need to make your infrastructure do what you want, and reducing complexity because it removes failure points from the production environment.

K8s is nice and all, but if all you really need can be solved by 2 VM's and a way to announce an anycast address (or use a loadbalancer if that is not an option), why would i add all that complexity?

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#46

Post by ActorNightly »

overgard wrote: post #31

I agree with the point that production is hard. There's so many things you just don't think about as a developer that end up being important. Log storage, certificate renewal, etc. I think how "hard" kubernetes is depends on how deep you go. If you're building a cluster from scratch, on your own hardware, setting up the control plane yourself etc. it's very very hard. On the other hand, if you're using a hosted servi…

I disagree that production is hard in itself, I think the way people approach production makes it needlessly more difficult. It seems that when launching a service, everyone seems to try to get the entire stack in one shot, which is difficult.

A much better approach is "1. Make it work 2. Make it good 3. Make it fast". Your initial prototypes need to define the core functionality, and then you incrementally build stuff on top of that.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#47

Post by honkycat »

I am consistently confused by all of the talk about how "hard" Kubernetes is.

We spin up EKS. We install the newrelic and datadog log ingestion pods onto it, provided in a nice "helm" format.

We install a few other resources via helm, like external secrets, and external dns, and a few others.

Kubernetes EKS runs like a champ. My company saves 100k/mo by dynamically scaling our cloud services, all of which are running on Kubernetes, to more efficiently use compute classes.

My company has over 50 million unique users monthly. We have massive scale. Kubernetes just works for us and we only have 2 people maintaining it.

What we gain is a unified platform with a consistent API for developing our services. And if we wanted to migrate elsewhere, it is one less thing to worry about.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Feels like some kind of hipster instinct to dislike the "cool new thing"... even though k8 has been around for years now and has been battle tested to the bone.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#48

Post by Veuxdo »

ActorNightly wrote: post #46
overgard wrote: post #31

I agree with the point that production is hard. There's so many things you just don't think about as a developer that end up being important. Log storage, certificate renewal, etc. I think how "hard" kubernetes is depends on how deep you go. If you're building a cluster from scratch, on your own hardware, setting up the control plane yourself etc. it's very very hard. On the other hand, if you're using a hosted servi…

I disagree that production is hard in itself, I think the way people approach production makes it needlessly more difficult. It seems that when launching a service, everyone seems to try to get the entire stack in one shot, which is difficult. A much better approach is "1. Make it work 2. Make it good 3. Make it fast". Your initial prototypes need to define the core functionality, and then you incrementally build stu…

Security as well. Now step 0 is "Make it secure". When using microservices connected via the internet, you have no choice.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#49

Post by srejk »

znpy wrote: post #9
tkiolp4 wrote: post #2

I think the post title should be called “Production is hard” (as the author talks about later on). Pick up any technology out there: from Python, to C++, to K8s, to Linux… Do the analogous “Hello world” using such technologies and run the program on your laptop. Easy. You congratulate yourself and move on. Production is another story. Suddenly your program that wasn’t checking for errors, breaks. The memory that you…

Quoting Bryan Cantrill: production is war.

And war is hell.

Re: Kubernetes is hard

#50

Post by sshine »

kazen44 wrote: post #45
sshine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're building a cluster from scratch, on your own hardware, setting up the control plane yourself etc. it's very very hard. I'd like to make a distinction: If you do cluster deployment from scratch, Kubernetes actually gets easier. Because you get good at it. What it also gets is more time-consuming. If you aim to replicate all of AWS, then unrealistically so. The art is knowing when to stop. For a lot of peop…

At the end of the day, getting a stable production environment is simply a tradeoff between the amount of complexity you need to make your infrastructure do what you want, and reducing complexity because it removes failure points from the production environment. K8s is nice and all, but if all you really need can be solved by 2 VM's and a way to announce an anycast address (or use a loadbalancer if that is not an opt…

I totally agree.

I've gotten away with docker-compose for container orchestration for the last 16 months.

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